"...murdered"

 

"...murdered"

I wrote this about four years ago. At the start of the Trump era. Very little has changed.

About that Executive Order to roll back many of the long fought for Human Rights of assorted Queers Perverts trouble makers, and Inconvenient Artists. Amazingly it seems one of Trump's daughters,...ya know the sane one implored her dad to not do that. Not sure if that worked.

Many forget that this thing started not for the various middle class obsessions like marriage, but for the Right just to be Alive.

Maybe some remember that's what we went out into the streets in the first place for.

The "Right" not to be arrested harassed blackmailed fucked over beaten up on the street at school or even by family. The basic Right Not to get Murdered to the applause of most.

Perhaps if we aired out a few hundred bullies bashers, and assorted Nazi's the playing field might get a bit more level...ya think?

The emotional impact of 100...'One HUNDRED' Queers being shot.

100 Queers, and their pals were 'shot' in an Orlando Florida nightclub. 100 Queers shot in the same time at the same place. More than half are 'Dead' now.

This is what the Nazi's did, and Isis does.

This crime has been acid within my soul all summer fall, and winter. If it were any other group they'd be putting up big marble memorials or at least planning them.

'But hey it was just a bunch'a Queers,...so.

'So' I went nuts for a while wanting bloody vengeance once, and for all against those that have made our lives hell. Hell for all of our lives.

They have made "me"/us live in hell from childhood to old age. The thing is both they, and 'we' have just accepted it as just how it is. Decades of activism notwithstanding...just how it is.

So I wanted to give 'them' a taste of the hell they so casually obliviously subjected me, and mine too. Subjected us to this fire for centuries, and centuries.

Vengeance is wrong, but they finally brought me to it's edge.

Yeah sure yeah I'm still a Queer pacifist, and all that, but sometimes this shit gets to be too fucking much. Also there's that law of nature that ya has to eat what ya kill.

Bigot meat is poison.

Also I ain't that hungry.

"...Yawk"

This is rather long,...it got out of hand.

Well for me "Old New York" were the immediate post-war years. I was born in 1950 so remember the city from the early 50's. The town still looked much as it did in the 1930's.

It didn't radically change till the 60's, and then again in the 1980's. It's doing it again now.

However I have a personal memory of how things were then, and I miss it. Not the crap awfulness, and Jim Crow. Yeah we had plenty of that. I never learned to swim because many public pools were locally segregated.

That I don't miss. Rather a sense of the better things as they were. ..or at least as I remember them.

The city was historically interesting then. We've since lost so many of the late 19th, and early 20 century places, and things. Places taken for granted for generations.

For example my Mom, when we went shopping, would take me to lunch at the "Auto-Mat", ...yeah that one like you saw in 1930's, and 40's movies..

Many streets were still cobblestone. This from the era of horse drawn wagons, and carriages. Some of which were still running around loose to my childhood joy.

Also people dressed better.

There was more consciousness of appearance. One that had nothing to do with fashion dementia as today. It had to do with self respect.

Well-to-do middle or working class all dressed as best as they could when they went out. I remember my Dad taking me, and my sister Sylvia to our neighborhood park.

We dressed up!

He wore a tie, jacket, and fedora, and we wore clean play clothes. I don't have to tell you what it's like now.

There were no glass, and steel clad skyscrapers yet.

Everything was granite, limestone, and marble. I used to think that the buildings were made from Graham crackers, and cookies. This because in the afternoon sun that's exactly what they looked like.

A whole city made from cookies or biscuits...for you folks in the Commonwealth.

You could tell the cars apart as well. This because each manufacturer had radically different designs. Our cars are now made of plastic, and look like melted sneakers.

The subways system still had rolling old stock in service. Everything from the AB Standard 1914 model to the 1948 Red Bird were banging around our tunnels.

Also while standing on the platform you could get a five cent Coke out of them classic old machines. From news stands,...news agents candy was five cents, and a comic book 10. cents!

I remember on one birthday my Ma gave me $2 bucks! A vast fortune in kid currency. I bought five comics down there.

Best of times the worst,...blah, blah you get the deal.

It's just that things seemed to matter more then.

As I say I think we were all more connected to our person-hoods back in that day. Stuff mattered, had value all that.

Mind you maybe them that was adults then might think all this is a load of baloney. Hey I was a kid, and this is what it looked like to me.

Anyway I was just thinking about them times is all.

"The Mouse is Pissed"

Mickey is one pissed off rodent these days. Not only have those bastards at Disney extended their illegal copyright over all his work for the next 100 years. He was planning to give his stuff free to the world to screw with all they liked. As he said...

"...Art Belongs to Everyone!"

Not so with the greedy corporate sociopaths that run the country, and indeed the World! "Mickey" the People's Mouse said at the 2021 socially distanced masked, and somewhat drunken "Fictitious Characters Congress" in Mexico City.

"The time has come for 'Toons, and all imaginary beings from literature to act on behalf of the very Earth itself! Them damned hairless monkeys have pushed Nature too far, and it's time out of sheer survival that we take matters into our Technicolor hands!"

Though Mickey acknowledges that the bulk of humanity are in general agreement with 'Toons that the Earth is in grave danger, and steps must be taken. Witness the Millions of swell folks that voted all over the country for the primal rights of all, and to gave that Pussy Grabber the heave-ho!

Despite this sez Mickey, "...Re-joining the Paris Accord is good, but the time has passed for mere reform. We're dead ducks,..eh no offense Donald. We 'Toons have a unique position in society, and it's time we used it."

"We enter the human psyche in a million subtle ways 24/7 365, and now we're going to use that advantage to save what's left of our World!"

Just what Mickey, and the World of Toons have in mind they're holding close to the chest. Those card it seems will soon be played. There are rumors of something called the "Toon Bomb". Goofy in an unguarded moment during an interview on "Meet the 'Toons" last Sunday let slip the term.

When asked for an explanation he was hurriedly removed from the studio by his handlers.

"Ya moron ya trying blow the deal?!" ...was overheard from one as they quickly left the facility, and drove away in a convoy of armored black SUVs.

As for what this means. Plus an answer to if Pluto's a dog that the fuck is Goofy?! We can only watch, and wait.

"...NAKED RADIO"

Thousands of years ago. Oh my it must have been in the early 1980's. Yeah morning in someone's America I heard. Anyway a bunch of trouble makers at the former WBAI radio, eh try wbai.org, and see if it's still there.

Anyway as part of the oral history on my 30 plus years there "Uncle Sydney Remembers" is the working title. "Eat Shit, and Die you Jew Hating Eunuchs!" is the real masthead.

I think I'm digressing already.

What I meant to say was that way back then some of the overnight crew. That is engineers, and on air presenters started going to a nude beach together. Out on Jones Beach there was for a time an unofficial nude bathing area.

'Least till that bastard Mayor Koch closed it down.

That prick was everybody's enemy! He was in the pocket of the evil real-estate interests which at that time was kicking out the working poor, and middle class from Manhattan.

His infamous statement at a press conference about that, "If you can't afford it...move." ..said his honor with a smirk!

His head deserved to be impaled on a pike, and paraded about after the merciless hot bloody, and vengeful revolution! ...along with all the lawyers of course.

I digresses again.

Anyway for a few years from late May to the beginning of September we did the beach. This got us used to seeing each other sky-clad or blue-jay nekkid!

Gimme a break we was 20, and early 30 somethings. That, and mostly out of our minds.

One thing led to another, and we started being naked at the radio station.

At the stroke of midnight when all the serious "day" people had gone home. This to pray to Stalin or Fidel the night crew took over.

Oh such gleefully though innocent times.

We did,...according to reviews, some of the most creative New York radio of the era, and a few times did it nekkid as the G-ddess intended.

Mind you those of us still breathing, and there ain't that many . What with cancer AIDS, and the stupid bullshit that just happens taking us out. The few still around probably wouldn't do a stripped down re-run. This for esthetic reasons.

Com'on would you really 'want' to see ya grand folks nekkid...on purpose.

Nuff said.

Like in my stories about routinely lunching, and walking the ledge of the Empire State Building. My legs dangling over the edge. This outside our transmitter room. Oh the things we did, and called normal.

What a time we had.

"...shop"

I post this again because it cheers me up. Tickles the soul as Emily Dickenson said.

It goes,...

"Chapter, and Verse”

One of my dreams has always been to open a little book store. Granted in this environment of the deliberate destruction of these by technology predatory capital, and general indifference. Despite that I still keep the dream.

I’d ‘still’ do it if I could.

My hood has everything a working class area needs. Bodegas church food pantries Social Security offices handy subway lines trigger happy cops,…tradition.

We have dozens of liquor stores too.

However no book stores. …not one. Well not counting the religious Botanica shops. These where you can get assorted religious scribblings, and near life sized plaster statues of the saint of you choice.

Mostly really big Jebus icons covered in blood from the scourging. These are all over the place.

I prefer the Virgin Mary items,…they’re less dramatic. One doesn’t get the feeling she was just shot, and or hacked by looking at her.

Folks need, and believe in weird stuff.

About that store I had in mind. I’d still do it. If only to see what would happen if one showed up. Showed up in a pre-gentrified way.

There’s plenty of Book Shoppe’s in the re-whited hoods of my part of town. That, and very high priced health food supermarkets yoga studios.

Also mostly white only store front pre-schools that, and better services,…cops sanitation like that.

So I’d like to do a social experiment of a little book shop for real people. I might make a go having Zero competition.

Yeah there’s the local Library however it’s a ghost of what it was. Just a few stacks a couple of computers. A pissed off bored uninterested civil service staff, and almost no one sitting, and reading…other than a few old folks like me.

Okay so far this post is a tale of urban horror, and almost makes you 'want’ gentrification. Which I would if it weren’t so much like what happened to the Plains Natives. In our case the settlers would be sitting over our bones eating tofu ice cream, and reading Proust.

Almost forgot.

Why do I love the idea of a book store.

Obviously because I love to bleeping read. I write draw, and used to publish my own books. Hand printing binding all that neat smarty pants crap. Back in the day. I was in with a whole gleeful deranged crowd that did just that.

We self styled ourselves the “Micro-Press” movement. This just to generally have fun, and in reaction to the dreary hunting to sell movie rights bunch from of the “small press”.

Before the internet folks used to read. That, and publish their dreams on office copiers offset presses hand cranked mimeo even carbon stencil. The latter like Soviet era dissidents.

We had a fucking ball.

The memory of that happy noise stays with me as does the idea we all had of opening a book store. However as happens life, and responsibilities took over. I was just starting as a broadcast engineer. My comrades we also just beginning careers, and families. That, and so very many were lost in the AIDS pandemic,…the rest is postponed history.

40+ plus years later the idea still swims drifts in the currents of my dreams. Yeah a damned bookstore in the heart of a hood where they think no one would bother to even look at a book. I’d put it right between the liquor store, and the barber shop.

....cross over traffic.

The place would only need a core of 50 regular customers to pay the rent. So word of mouth free comic book days visits from assorted famous weirdos, and complimentary cookies would do it.

Just 50 or so secret Dreamers.

“Uncle Sydney’s Shop of Bewildered Wonderments, and Curiosities”

Has possibilities.

Theme song for the shop below.

 

"...theatre"

Yet another episode in my recent health history.

Thanks to FB for inserting these traumas back into my memory....thanks a lot.

"First of all it was winter. Sharp winds early dusks quiet nights. My old bones demanded attention."

Act One Triage.

If an injury is possible it's here.

A prisoner chained to a gurney opposite me. A patrolman at his side. Grunts of the urban wars. Being soldiers they have much in common.

So they spoke not of rage, but cars sports family, and the Army.

Iraq vets both.

Act Two Observation.

A pod of ten beds with flat screens floating above them. Much pain. They limit meds. The Opioid Crisis. I watched hours of "The Walking Dead" to cheer myself up.

New Years Eve.

Our doctor played the ukulele, and sang for us.

Angels everywhere.

Finally serious Morphine. I entered 2019 in a most pleasant state.

Act Three Treatment.

The 'real' hospital begins. Here they keep all the knives, and saws.

I'm pried injected drained poked x-rayed MRI's, and Sonogramed. Btw I'm still not pregnant.

Assorted real-time truths presented. Stuff needs to be chopped off. It's just a question of how much.

??!!!

After more MRI shake, and baking they settle on just one little piggy. The other nine, and the legs they're attached to are reprieved,...for now.

Act Four The Operating Theatre.

No popcorn,...or cartoons.

Walls ceilings flyby. Muted voices. Then so bright so cold so quick.

Did I mention at some point my veins stopped working, and they had to go digging into my arteries for blood. That was the only fun part.

Act Five Post-Op.

A blur. Sleep. Deep sleep.

I think I remember nurses doctors speaking to me or maybe I dreamed them. Same thing. Eventually I'm Medevac'd to my digs.

Act Six.

Home.